Weekly Video Recap: Establish Your Online Presence
This step aims to create an online space to showcase your art and connect with your target audience. This space will serve as your home base, where you direct people from your marketing efforts such as through social media or QR codes at events. Setting this up sooner rather than later is crucial for your niche marketing efforts.
Your Options for Setting Up a Platform for your Art Business
The term “platform” can refer to various things—it might be your entire website, a part of your website, or even an online portfolio that functions as a website. The key is to have a space that effectively shares information about you and your art.
What if You Already Have a Website?
If you already have a website or platform that works for you, you’ll want to build on it as we move forward in our process.
Soon, we’ll discuss the essential elements of every platform. Until then, review your current online presence or start building your platform. Remember, your online space should showcase the quality and creativity of your art.
A note about affiliate links: Some of the links provided are affiliate links, meaning that I make a small commission if you buy through my link. For more info, check out my Terms page.
Find An Online Community That Serves Your Audience
This week’s video overviews how to research for your niche marketing plan by focusing on some “hot spots” where you can find information, such as online communities.
Weekly Video Recap
No matter what you’re focusing on—whether it’s a specific medium, style, or subject—there’s always a community that shares your passion.
Joining online communities, forums, and social media groups is one of the best ways to learn about your niche audience. You’ll discover conversations, insights, and experiences that can help you understand more about your audience. And, these spaces are great for finding marketing opportunities, potential collaborations, and more.
Where to Begin
Facebook remains a popular platform for niche communities. Countless groups exist around specific art forms, techniques, and interest groups. LinkedIn also has many groups that might be appropriate for you. While Instagram doesn’t have groups, searching for specific hashtags allows you to discover niche-based accounts to follow.
Independent Websites and Forums Niche-specific forums and websites can be beneficial depending on your area of focus.
Tips for Using Online Communities for Your Art Marketing Research
Find Your Resources
Identify the platforms and communities most relevant to your niche.
Visit Regularly
Make it a habit to check in regularly and note what you observe.
Engage
While focused on listening and learning in this stage, you can engage where it makes sense. Be careful to respect any community rules regarding promotion or posting artwork.
Enhance Your Marketing Efforts
By carefully selecting the right online communities and forums, you’ll gain deeper insights into your niche audience. This will inform your creative process and help you build stronger connections with those who are most likely to become your biggest supporters. Stay tuned for the next installment in our series, where we’ll explore additional research methods to help you connect with your niche audience.
Use this Target Audience Worksheet to Create A Buyer Persona
This week’s video overviews a target audience worksheet that will help you as you go deeper into researching your audience.
Weekly Video Recap
Create a Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a profile of your ideal customer, including their demographics, interests, behaviors, and motivations. Completing one or more buyer personas for your current or potential audience is helpful in research and future marketing strategy.
Use existing client data if available or make educated guesses about your ideal customer based on what you’ve worked on in Identifying an Audience. The worksheet is a dynamic tool that can evolve as you go.
Stop! Before You Do Anything Else, Set up Your Art Inventory System
This week’s Art Is An Advantage video discusses the importance of an artwork inventory system and the options for setting one up.
Weekly Video Recap
Setting up a system to track your art inventory keeps you organized and makes you more efficient in the long run.
Options for Your System
Here are some options for keeping track of your artwork inventory:
Spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are the tried-and-true method of organizing data, and they can serve as a simple yet effective way to inventory your artwork. Programs like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets allow you to create customizable tables to input details such as artwork title, dimensions, medium, creation date, pricing, and location. While spreadsheets offer flexibility and familiarity, they may lack specialized features tailored to the needs of artists. But they are a great place to start quickly organizing your information.
Hybrid Platforms
Hybrid platforms such as Airtable and Notion are examples of cloud-based platforms. They combine a spreadsheet’s simplicity with a database’s functionality, allowing you to organize and manage data flexibly. It offers customizable views, real-time collaboration, templates, integrations with other apps, and automation features.
Art Inventory Software
If you seek a more comprehensive solution, art inventory software provides specialized features explicitly designed for managing artwork. Platforms like Artwork Archive offer robust tools for cataloging artworks, tracking inventory, recording sales, generating reports, and creating online portfolios.
Online Platforms and Marketplaces
Many online platforms and marketplaces cater to artists looking to showcase and sell their work while offering inventory management features. Websites like Etsy, Saatchi Art, or your artist website can serve as platforms for organizing your artwork inventory.
How to Choose
When considering options for inventorying your artwork, evaluate your needs, preferences, and budget. The best inventory solution for you could depend on factors such as the size of your art collection, your level of technical expertise, your budget, and your long-term goals as an artist.
The Bottom Line
Whether you opt for a traditional spreadsheet, a dedicated software solution, or an online platform, organizing and cataloging your artwork will streamline your administrative tasks, enhance your professionalism, and help you maximize opportunities.
Some of the links provided are affiliate links, meaning that I make a small commission if you buy through my link. For more info, check out my Terms page.
For Artists Who Feel Lost in the Art Marketing Maze. Research Your Way Out.
This week’s Art Is An Advantage video explains how research can help you ditch scattershot marketing approaches in the art marketing maze and find the perfect marketing tactics for your unique art style.
Weekly Video Recap
Use targeted research to find your way out of the maze and develop an effective marketing strategy for your work. Here are three examples:
1. Researching Audience
Who are your ideal collectors? Are they young, tech-savvy professionals who frequent online art marketplaces? Or seasoned collectors who value the experience of a traditional gallery setting? Or is there a niche you are targeting related to a cause or subject matter? Research demographics, artistic preferences, and buying habits to paint a clear picture of your target audience.
2. Finding Marketing Channels
Once you know who you’re looking for, determine where they spend their time online and offline. Are they active on specific social media platforms like Instagram or attending art fairs focused on a particular style? Research the channels most frequented by your target audience to maximize your reach.
3. What’s Going on in Your Space?
Research is about more than just your ideal collectors. Look at how successful artists in your style or medium are marketing themselves. What platforms do they use? How do they present their work online and offline? Analyzing successful strategies can offer valuable insights that you can use to adapt to your unique work.
Research for Your Art Marketing is an Ongoing Process
Remember, research is an ongoing process. As your audience grows and evolves, so should your marketing strategy. By dedicating time to research, you’ll gain a deep understanding of your target audience and the channels that resonate with them. This knowledge will transform your marketing efforts from a guessing game to a targeted, practical approach that gets your art seen by the right people.
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